Thanksgiving Dinner Under $50

Thanksgiving Meal for 10 Under $50

I was asked to go shopping with Channel 7’s Russell Haythorn and get a Thanksgiving meal for 10 people for under $50. I had 30 minutes to prepare my shopping list and meet the news crew at the store, so it was a time challenge for me as well. It was very easy to execute by using the uGrocery app. I simply put in my shopping list of turkey, potatoes, green beans, chicken broth, cranberry sauce, stuffing, carrots, celery, and pies and the when I used the find lowest bill feature in the app, it told me the best place to shop for this list was at Safeway. Once we got there – we were pleasantly surprised to find a Safeway Just for U digital coupon for the Honeysuckle turkey for $.65 per lb., which was cheaper than the advertised price and brought our overall total down.

The big question was whether we could get a ham and turkey for under $50, and that is really only possible if you got your free turkey from Safeway earlier in the month when they had the free turkey promotion, or if you plan to forgo some other essentials like sweet potatoes and dessert. The ham’s are on sale for $1.29/lb. for the bone-in ham shank, so to feed 10 people we would need a 10-15 lb. ham and that would’ve cost around $19, and we would have been over budget. So, we stuck with the traditional Thanksgiving meal of turkey, stuffing, green bean casserole with fresh fried onions rather than the packaged variety, cranberry sauce, mashed potatoes and sweet potatoes and of course pumpkin pie and apple pie with whipped cream for dessert.

Here is a sample of my list in uGrocery:

Here was the total showing Safeway as the winning store at $37.05 for 19 items: I would have paid $10.68 more for the same grocery list at Target. But – Target’s turkey’s are $.79 per pound, so it would have been even more than that because we only paid $.65 per pound for the turkey with a Safeway Just for U digital coupon we loaded just before checkout.

There were a few products on the list that were significantly less at Safeway, like eggs for just $.99 a dozen that tipped the scale toward Safeway for my particular list:

Here’s what we bought and what we paid:

Pepperidge Farm Stuffing – $2.50

Safeway Brand canned Cranberry Sauce – $1.25

4 Cans of Del Monte Green Beans on sale for $.50 each – $2.00

Swanson Broth 32 oz – $2.10

Lucerne Eggs 1 dozen – $.99

Lucerne Butter 1 pound – $1.99

Sara Lee Apple Pie – $3.00

Sara Lee Pumpkin Pie – $3.00

Cool Whip – $1.25

15 lb. Honeysuckle Frozen Turkey at $.65/lb – $$9.25

2 Navel Oranges – $1.82

1 3 lb. bag of onions – $2.99

1 bunch of celery – $2.37

4 sweet potatoes at $.99/lb. – $3.74

1 lb of carrots – $.79

10 lb bag of potatoes – $.99

Total Cost = $41.03

Total Savings = $35.87 (47%)

We forgot to pick up a few essentials like milk for the mashed potatoes, rolls and beverages, but we were shopping at a new store and the layout was quite different than my neighborhood Safeway store, so that’s why I forgot these ingredients. The total for the missing ingredients is $7.19 (2.9 for 1 gallon of milk, 3 2 Liters of soda for $.99 each and rolls for $2.00)

uGrocery is Colorado’s only grocery price comparison service. Download and use the free uGrocery app to see all the best deals and all unadvertised sales at King Soopers, Safeway, Walmart and Target. Compare prices real-time for your shopping list and save.

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